Felt stomach aches on the road today
as a radio host spoke
of an earthquake spending
time in Oklahoma City. Damage
reported Minimal, no worse
than McVeigh and Nichols
vacation except one is dead,
the other in prison.
Personally, I coordinate holidays
alongside environmental disruptions;
airfare extremely cheap
and TSA too fun when relaxing.
The strong-arm described
through the speaker system
above the moving walkway
is long gone with friends
in other places and rooms
nodding secrets into silences.
The Richter scale doesn’t measure
earthquakes recorded over
a magnitude of eight;
I count there on fingers,
or up to the numeral
I’ve slept through seismic
waves in agreement. Timothy
McVeigh and Terry Nichols
conjure a tectonic shift
in an Oklahoma city. Think
of a Djinn: A Genie sprung
from a lamp. Arabian Nights
and an Oxford edition (One Thousand
and One Arabian Nights) I never read.
In 2011 a similar upheaval will befall
a parallel city with thousands more people
but fewer buildings. I feel myself
asleep through after shocks, news updates.
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